Healthy Eating on a Meager Budget

Excuse me but
****Rant Warning ****
It is a MYTH that financially challenged people can't afford to eat healthy.
Omg, seriously ? Intelligent people still believe this crap ! When otherwise smart people say this in conversation to me watch out , my soapbox just slides out automatically on that one.
Where do I start ?
My own experience as a single mother raising 3 children in Southern Appalachian poverty, how's that.

First understand I wasn't raised in poverty myself, it's just something that evolved along the way. Poverty can mean different things but here I'm simply referring to the condition of NOT ENOUGH MONEY. Ten to seventeen thousand  a year , is that poverty enough ? I remember a social worker looking over her glasses at me questioning me how we got by.

Back to the subject. Food. Not going to give you horrid details , or the number of times I debated between a gallon of milk or a gallon of gas.    

We didn't have soda or cheetos around unless it was a birthday party or something like that. 

Tried to buy juice once a week but have to admit there were a few real troughs where I did buy kool aid packets that you add sugar to, hope there's sugar at home, lol. 

My kids drank milk, when juice ran out it was gone til I could get more and omg , miracle of miracles, my kids drank water. Water. (we have access to clean water) My kids drank water at home. Sure they loved all the crap stuff, it wasn't in their home.

Some one said to me once because they knew I live rurally that sure it's easy to eat healthy when you can grow your own food.....     Lmao !!!!        Single mother of 3 , working full time when lucky and sometimes when not lucky 3 jobs at a time? Who has time for a garden?            Lmao.                  Who has time to cut the grass or even fold the laundry? Ok point made there.

Choices. Every thing in life boils down to choices.
Typically for us brown rice is an excellent staple, no not white rice, right? Beans are always cheap, the whole country of Mexico can't be  wrong on that ! Jesus isn't this obvious ? Pasta weekly cause they loved it & it was quick & easy.

Oh, oh oh !!! That brings me to another point. Single mother don't have time or energy to cook real food.  ...............       Are you crazy? ......,  Its not like I had to start a fire to cook with or anything.       ...........          I have now, and always have had a stove. 

  Do make food for yourself ? Every day ? Do you eat every day ? Fast food culture ,  need I say more ? (yes my kids were american and liked happy meals when I would get them).

 .......   Yeah I cooked,
it's part of what you do , you learn to streamline things.
Put the rice on , take the laundry out of he washer (yes we usually had one) , hang it on the line. Throw a couple veggies and a protein in a pan saute it up and there's supper tonight, and for a couple more nights.

Time? Let me tell you about time, ha ! I would pick them up from school 30 minutes away from home ( we live rurally) get them home , get them on their homework while I was there to supervise , get the food on , eat a few bites and rush out of he house usually late for work at 5:00. Ok? Does that sound like an ordinary american schedule? Yes. And I cooked in there because it was IMPORTANT.

You prepare food because that's a basic prerequisite to eating , and eating is a basic survival thing of life.

This world has made it easy to prepare REAL FOOD simply and quickly. So why not?
Oh back to shopping , fresh veggies are so expensive..... Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. If you think you can't eat fresh vegetables on a budget maybe you are stupid.

First check the mark down shelf, then for example an onion and a bunch of broccoli can stretch out a week.(4 people , 3 kids one adult) Usually we have carrots, ya buy a bunch and they're always there some how. Any one have a problem with onion broccoli carrots? I would buy a chicken each week if I could , hell one chicken can go a long way and taste different every night and then make soup. Sheesh it's not rocket science, this is what we do as humans , idk wtf people who eat crap are thinking. Oh yeah , they're not. Well wake up.

Snacks.  Kids need snacks.  Yes they do. Here again choices. Bananas and apples are cheap. My kids knew how to make cookies if they wanted them, and it was fun to mess up the kitchen & leave it that way for when I got home at 1:00 a.m.  Did I say oh my and clean it? Ummm,  no, I went to bed cause I had to get up at 6 to get them to school. (All that and still managed 8 hours sleep ... Another topic.) ......  The youngest got so good at this that he could make a delicious perfectly textured cake from scratch no box mix !

What about picky eaters ? My kids were american, they tried that shit. I accommodated as best I could but they ate or didn't. Sorry not sorry. Faced with those choices a being usually eats at least something as we are biologically programmed for survival.

Oh oh oh ! And don't forget vegetarians !!!! My middle son realized he was a vegetarian in second grade and that's all there was to that. You accommodate , duh , don't cook the meat and veggies together. He is still vegetarian at 21 years old. He won't wear leather, even fake leather.

So that's my rant. 

Pretty ranty wasn't it. 

Food is a tender topic these days with industrialized farming, toxic oceans and glyphosate or glyphosine or however the derivative is spelled , another topic, Google it , sprayed even on "organic" food. Shoot, just do the best you can and love your neighbor.

Hermits a slight intro sort of

One of my visions for eathstar village is a community of hermits. Some have to have it explained, obviously they're not going to fit in with this segment of outcasts. Even loners and hermits are not islands.
Back when Myspace was the ruling social media I had a page for earthstar village.  I liked the format of the old Myspace, alas fb took over.
 I went on a roll about hermits.  Was it a blog or a page, I don't remember and whoa this new technology talking about it as back in the day.....
Any way, I guess that's just a lead in to my fascination with hermits, loners, outcasts that cast themselves.
But what is it about people that choose to live that way, a mystique? Pity, morbid fascination?
What's the psychology of this tendency any way.
And obviously this is a precursor to more on hermits and community concepts.
 Thank you

That's not how ya do a blog

That's not how ya do a blog. Ya gotta have pictures, ya gotta have appeal. Ya gotta market to your readers.
Forget that, how about just speaking the truth.
Ummm, that will never do.

Also ya don't do a blog by going back a week later and adding to or editing your post and calling it a blog session. That's just not the way to do it even if you got of something relevant that would make the whole thing more thorough.
Well I'm doing it that way so in the end, or at varying intermissions I can refer to it or whatever seems likely.

Accidental Garden

So since ....... I like starting as if we were in the middle of a conversation already.....so any way, since restarting this blog I've looked at a few others. Homesteading gardening natural living that sort of thing.
They all seem to kinda have a theme.... "I moved out here did these things, this is how it worked and blah blah blah ....." Of course I'm not going to blend in with that crowd of fearless individuals , alas I never do.
Back to the subject, finally.
Accidental Gardening.
That's my style, touched on it briefly day before yesterday with my ideas to plant potatoes inspired by old Russian ladies and old ladies living in Chernobyl forbidden zone. (that's another story, google it, I don't have to re tell it it's not my story).
But upon reflection, that's how my whole gardens have evolved. Over the years myriads of things have been planted here and some have stayed with varying degrees of success. Whatever lived/survived got to stay and whatever died wasn't replanted. I didn't plan it that way , but it's been a kind of organic process.  Long term and didn't really even have to be patient, just watched it unfold.
Namaste you'uns

Thursday morning vaguely reflects

Ya know, after leaving Babylon...well kind of....since I don't have to go into "work" and put on a public face any more , I've been able to move further inside myself.
This might sound like a far out groovy thing, and yeah it certainly is, but like everything else it seems to be a double edge sword.
On the one hand, moving inward, deepening meditation, slowing to a more natural rhythm. But then there's new conflicts to deal with. After all that lovely inward whoo whoo ya get more sensitive to energies. All the sudden going to town or even talking to a friend on the phone becomes a delicate dance of avoiding toxic energies.   Oh yeah, just surround yourself with a white bubble of energy....fuck off.
Any way, as I was saying, if it's not one thing it's another.
Namaste you'uns 🕉️👽

Can't Call It "One Woman Farm"

Well I've had this blog sitting in wait for a long time. Years. Not really knowing but having a vague idea what I'd do with it.  Had something in mind regarding g the community and Air B&B, but nah, not yet.
Then as I've been here, doing what I'm doing I realized people might find it interesting, especially if it's written well.
Kinda what I'm doing is a one woman farm, but some one has already taken that title.
Sure it's significant that I'm a lone woman managing a small farm..not newly moving I to a homestead situation, but moving further into a groove started long ago.
So I'm a bit of a loner, my kids are grown and I'm free to do my art and whatever else keeps me occupied. I've retired from working in Babylon. My last gig was 5 1/2 years owning a tattoo shop in a nearby town.
Stained glass is my first love. I missed it dearly the 13 years I worked in the tattoo industry. I'm at a place in my life I've been dreaming of and talking about for all these years.
Now how do I actually make it work? How can I make a farm work by myself and still have time for art ?

Ok, here's the idea. Older ladies in Russia and Ukraine grow potatoes. A perfect crop. Low maintenance and nutritious.  There are volunteer tomatoes growing, no need to plant and fuss. Lambs quarters grow abundantly. There are shitake mushroom logs and even though I don't eat my chickens, they provide tasty eggs.  That's a start even though I've been here 23 years.
Kids are grown, the struggle to care for and support them not so intense. I'm building my own beautiful life as independent as I can get with a foot in both worlds.
 Namaste